DOJ: Ferguson PD descrimination against blacks is routine

I have never seen a sporting event riot anywhere near as bad, though.

IIRC, the Governor was criticized by the Mayor for not sending in the Nat'l Guard.

That would have been great, that would have finally given them the manpower to fully attack the reporters and others covering the situation instead of the half assed way they went about it.
 
It took moments to find some.

Well, yeah. But other than those,..... that's what he meant. Ferguson was the worst in terms of civil riots, I'm sure (except for all those other riots that were worse than Ferguson, that is).


ETA: Posters must be referring to some other forums than the JREF/ISF. Are we really saying that there weren't members here in auto-cop-defense-mode as the news was breaking in Ferguson? I think we have members with convenient memories.
 
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Well, yeah. But other than those,..... that's what he meant. Ferguson was the worst in terms of civil riots, I'm sure (except for all those other riots that were worse than Ferguson, that is).


ETA: Posters must be referring to some other forums than the JREF/ISF. Are we really saying that there weren't members here in auto-cop-defense-mode as the news was breaking in Ferguson? I think we have members with convenient memories.

It isn't even a hard search to find auto-cop-defenders. I recall recently reading several posters defending the shooting of a rock-throwing crazy guy with claims that rocks are deadly weapons that justify the use of deadly force.

I choose to trust that the grand jury in the Ferguson case made the best possible decision. That individual cop may well have acted proportional to the threat. In general, however, the FPD is guilty of systemic racism. Black citizens are targeted and are being denied the protections guaranteed by the US Constitution. That is a very big deal, and it is completely unimportant that there may be more good cops than bad in the FPD.
 
It isn't even a hard search to find auto-cop-defenders. I recall recently reading several posters defending the shooting of a rock-throwing crazy guy with claims that rocks are deadly weapons that justify the use of deadly force.
Or that will question whether an eventually fatal gunshot would to the stomach would cause external bleeding. I'm still trying to wrap my head around what brings someone to that point.
 
It isn't even a hard search to find auto-cop-defenders. I recall recently reading several posters defending the shooting of a rock-throwing crazy guy with claims that rocks are deadly weapons that justify the use of deadly force.

I choose to trust that the grand jury in the Ferguson case made the best possible decision. That individual cop may well have acted proportional to the threat. In general, however, the FPD is guilty of systemic racism. Black citizens are targeted and are being denied the protections guaranteed by the US Constitution. That is a very big deal, and it is completely unimportant that there may be more good cops than bad in the FPD.

Not really. The prosecutor received a lot of criticism of how he handled it, the frankly weird story put forward by the officer and basically doing a very bad job if he was actually trying to get charged brought. Of course he wasn't actually trying to get them to bring an indictment and didn't want the officer charged so it does make sense.
 
As annoyed as I get with the auto-cop defense, I get just as annoyed with the 'cops wrong in (near) every regard' posters. Rocks are deadly weapons, but that shooting was still unjustified. The Ferguson PD is an over-reacting bunch with severe racial problems, but the Brown shooting was justified. The take-down of the guy who died in New York was very wrong, but being arrested itself was not.

But who needs nuance?
 
As annoyed as I get with the auto-cop defense, I get just as annoyed with the 'cops wrong in (near) every regard' posters. Rocks are deadly weapons, but that shooting was still unjustified. The Ferguson PD is an over-reacting bunch with severe racial problems, but the Brown shooting was justified. The take-down of the guy who died in New York was very wrong, but being arrested itself was not.

But who needs nuance?

Nuance has no hold where there's an infection of Gottaberightis.
 
Ferguson Mayor Says Officer Fired Over Racist Email, Chief of Police a No-Show

Much of Knowles statement rehashed ongoing efforts to reform the city's courts and ticketing systems, but there was some news: The three officers responsible for racist emails uncovered by the DOJ were placed on administrative leave on Tuesday, and one was fired Wednesday. Knowles also highlighted the fact that three African American women have been hired to fill positions in the city jail and courts, and the city is hiring three new police officers. He did not, however, comment on whether the city will enter a consent decree with the DOJ, promising to reform police department practices.

The link also contains the text of the mayor's full response.

Why was Tom Jackson a last minute no-show? I would guess the stress on him right now is incredible. It wouldn't surprise me if he's having health problems due to this all this.
 
As annoyed as I get with the auto-cop defense, I get just as annoyed with the 'cops wrong in (near) every regard' posters. Rocks are deadly weapons, but that shooting was still unjustified. The Ferguson PD is an over-reacting bunch with severe racial problems, but the Brown shooting was justified. The take-down of the guy who died in New York was very wrong, but being arrested itself was not.

But who needs nuance?

Nuance shmuance. That's way too complicated.
 
Not very surprising

From a different thread:

Here's the video in text format;

http://spawktalk.blogspot.com/

His logic fails on the last part regarding job discrimination. He assumes that employers have knowledge of the studies he cites, and are basing their discriminatory practices on that. That's highly unlikely.

Also refer to the New Jersey turnpike study I linked to. It had very rigorous methodology, and its conclusions did not support the idea of racial profiling. It found that blacks were twice as likely to speed, and more likely to break 90mph -- consistent with the rates at which they are pulled over (twice as likely as whites).

I don't know where you were getting your data from I was getting it from the Missouri Attorney General's website

Compare the contraband hit rate with the arrest rate.

The "Disparity Index" measures the likelihood drivers of a given race or ethnic group are stopped based on their proportion of the residential population age 16 and over. Values greater than 1 indicate over-representation and values less that 1 indicate under-representation in traffic stops.
The values in the tables and graphs below represent the disparity index.
The "Search Rate" is the percent of stops resulting in a search.
The values in the tables below represent (Searches / Stops). The result of these calculations are represented in the graphs.
The "Contraband Hit Rate" is the percent of searches in which contraband is foun
The "Arrest Rate" is the percent of stops resulting in an arrest.
The values in the tables below represent (Arrests / Stops). The result of these calculations are represented in the graphs.

For 2013, being the latest data:





|Event|White|Black|
|Disparity Index|0.38|1.37|
|Search Rate|47 / 686|562 / 4632|
|Contraband Hit Rate|16 / 47|122 / 562|
|Arrest Rate|36 / 686|483 / 4632|



It is not proof of bias, but it is suspicious.


And this story for 2009 shows some rather bent practices:

Ferguson in 2009

Police in Ferguson, Missouri, once charged a man with destruction of property for bleeding on their uniforms while four of them allegedly beat him.

“On and/or about the 20th day of Sept. 20, 2009 at or near 222 S. Florissant within the corporate limits of Ferguson, Missouri, the above named defendant did then and there unlawfully commit the offense of ‘property damage’ to wit did transfer blood to the uniform,” reads the charge sheet.

The address is the headquarters of the Ferguson Police Department, where a 52-year-old welder named Henry Davis was taken in the predawn hours on that date. He had been arrested for an outstanding warrant that proved to actually be for another man of the same surname, but a different middle name and Social Security number.

I won't paste more, but it gets worse.
 
Former cop Dan Jackson, brother of Ferguson chief of police Tom Jackson, has replied to Eric Holder’s press report on Ferguson.

Jackson sent the following via text at approximately 5 PM Missouri time.

DOJ’s “disturbing pattern” noise about Ferguson PD is fabricated, based on their own made-up parameters that would never stand in court. The actual legitimate racial profiling states collected by MO attorney general show that Ferguson is better than the state average and has been improving over the last 3 years. DOJ did not use that (publicly available) info because it did not suit Holder’s vindictive “sweeping change” agenda.

http://gotnews.com/breaking-ferguson-cops-reply-to-eric-holders-fergusonreport/

This says that there is a problem:

The link has changed, here it is now:
http://ago.mo.gov/divisions/litigation/vehicle-stops-report



|Event|White|Black|
|Disparity Index|0.38|1.37|
|Search Rate|47 / 686|562 / 4632|
|Contraband Hit Rate|16 / 47|122 / 562|
|Arrest Rate|36 / 686|483 / 4632|

As for the "improving over the last three years"

Here are the disparity index results for 2011, 2012, 2013 (last year with data)

http://ago.mo.gov/divisions/litigation/vehicle-stops-report?lea=161

|2011|2012|2013|
|1.30|1.31|1.37|
which strikes me as going the wrong way. I agree that it looks better than the statewide average, but that just says the problem is bigger than one police department.
 
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Well, yeah. But other than those,..... that's what he meant. Ferguson was the worst in terms of civil riots, I'm sure (except for all those other riots that were worse than Ferguson, that is).


ETA: Posters must be referring to some other forums than the JREF/ISF. Are we really saying that there weren't members here in auto-cop-defense-mode as the news was breaking in Ferguson? I think we have members with convenient memories.

I think the Ferguson riots were a disgrace,but in the terms of US Riots they were minor league,and Single A league at that.
Compared to Los Angeles in the wake of Rodney King,or the riots of the 60's they were a minor distrubance.
And even the 60;s riots pale with the New York Draft riots of 1863,very well portrayed in Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York".
 
As annoyed as I get with the auto-cop defense, I get just as annoyed with the 'cops wrong in (near) every regard' posters. Rocks are deadly weapons, but that shooting was still unjustified. The Ferguson PD is an over-reacting bunch with severe racial problems, but the Brown shooting was justified. The take-down of the guy who died in New York was very wrong, but being arrested itself was not.

But who needs nuance?

It;s called "Blind Following of a Poltical Ideology Line" and still surprised we see so much of it (from all sides of the political spectrum) on a website devoted to rational thought.
 
Two questions does anyone believe it is possible the majority of the discrepancy in arrests etc could be because most of the crimes are committed by African-Americans in Ferguson? Or do you have to be racist to even think it is a possibility?

How do these statistics compare to other areas?

Of course that could just point to systemic racism in many areas if the stats are similar. Which I suspect they are.
ETA Here is an interesting article from USA Today.
 
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Two questions does anyone believe it is possible the majority of the discrepancy in arrests etc could be because most of the crimes are committed by African-Americans in Ferguson?
Hard to say. Were these crimes?


Or do you have to be racist to even think it is a possibility?
That depends. Do you find it likely that African-Americans commit more crimes than the rest of the population?

Of course that could just point to systemic racism in many areas if the stats are similar. Which I suspect they are.
Is there any question that the US Justice System has a long history of systemic and systematic racism? It is really hard to concede that a 200+ year historical momentum is not going to uniformly turn around and disappear over night or even over 50+ years?
 
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Two questions does anyone believe it is possible the majority of the discrepancy in arrests etc could be because most of the crimes are committed by African-Americans in Ferguson? Or do you have to be racist to even think it is a possibility?

How do these statistics compare to other areas?

Of course that could just point to systemic racism in many areas if the stats are similar. Which I suspect they are.
ETA Here is an interesting article from USA Today.

The DoJ rejected that idea.

Also the vehicle stop data that I posted is suspicious. Blacks: More likely to be stopped, more likely to be searched, more likely for the search to fail to find anything, more likely to be arrested.
 

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